In all, 32 representatives of 32 countries convened at Versailles in 1919 to draw up a peace settlement after World War I. In practice, the ultimate arbiters were the US, France and Britain and, to a lesser extent, Italy. Apart from the centerpiece Treaty of Versailles, there were four other... More
By 1245, the Mongols had crossed into central Europe, successfully conquering Hungary in 1241. Rumours of Mongol cruelty, such as the butchering of civilian populations who had been promised peaceful occupation, added to heightened terror throughout European Christendom; military orders (‘Warrior Monks’) were encamped on the plains of Hungary, ready... More
The global spread of Evangelicalism can be traced to the missionary movements of the 19th century, when European and American evangelicals travelled to Africa and Asia to spread the word. In 1951 evangelicals formed the World Evangelical Fellowship (WEF), and more than 110 regional and national organizations are now affiliated... More
The phrase ‘manifest destiny’ to define the inevitability of American western expansion was not coined until the 1840s but was prefigured by Jefferson’s ‘empire of liberty’ as early as 1780. The Treaty of Paris (1783), through force of arms, and the Louisiana Purchase (1803), through Napoleon’s impecuniousness, were great strides... More
As the Western Roman Empire began to fail Christianity began to spread beyond the borders of the former Empire. Christianity had spread from Roman Britain to Wales and Ireland and here a unique culture developed, which was in turn disseminated by Irish missionaries to Scotland and the continent. After pagan... More
The ‘Big Bang’ of the Umayyad Caliphate carried Islam by conquest from Spain to India in the century after Muhammad’s death. These dominions commanded the major trade routes of Europe, Asia and Africa; Islam’s further expansion owed as much to its long period of cultural and commercial hegemony as to... More
The first Muslim merchants are recorded in Sumatra in the 7th century. The catalyst for wider dissemination came with the establishment of powerful sultanates with trading empires in the 15th and 16th centuries: Malacca, Brunei and Aceh (Sufi missionaries were also influential). The Portuguese captured Malacca in 1511, but Aceh... More
Ivan I, Grand Duke of Moscow (1325–40), used his favoured vassal status to the Golden Horde to earn the soubriquet ‘gatherer of Russian lands’, inveigling the Khan to murder his rivals, or using trade monopolies to indebt them and annex their territories. Dmitri Donskoy (1359–89) was more bombastic, going to... More
The fall of Constantinople in 1453 allowed Ivan III (1462–1505) to style himself ‘tsar’, the natural successor to the emperors of Byzantium, and address the Holy Roman Emperor in correspondence as ‘brother’. Increasingly, his claims were justified. Although the Tatars were eliminated as a threat (the Crimean Khanate reached the... More
The chain of events leading to the formation of the Persian Empire can be traced to the collapse of Assyrian power at the end of the 7th century BCE. The Medes were major territorial beneficiaries and, after extending their sway through northern Persia and eastern Anatolia, in around 550 BCE... More
Boleslaw’s father, Mieszko I of Poland decreed his kingdom should be divided between several heirs, but Boleslaw outmanoeuvred his rivals ‘with fox-like cunning’ and seized the kingdom. He developed a cordial relationship with the Holy Roman Emperor, Otto III, who called him a ‘friend and ally of the Roman people’.... More
At Tilsit (1807), Napoleon ‘had but to raise his hand and Prussia would cease to exist’. The Prussians were helpless bystanders as France and Russia annexed over half their dominions. The critical intervention of Prussia’s most decorated soldier, General Blücher, at Waterloo exacted a sweet revenge on Napoleon; at Vienna... More